Filling In The Blanks
TMBG Le Poisson Rouge 5/30/09 (behind the scenes) Rohan Johnson: This was the only one of the LPR shows where they did not have the horn players with them. It was kind of sad and yet kind of nice to be back with just the five-guy line-up for a change. John Linnell: This was the first time BlueCanary heard Figure Eight. We had premiered it in Kansas City the weekend before so this was only it's second appearance. Also the first time he heard Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes and Thunderbird. It was a pretty exceptional setlist. John Flansburgh: For Hearing Aid, I pulled out a little stylophone to play the weird noises at the end. (Yes, I know they are technically some brand of synthesizer and not REALLY stylophones but it's the same general thing and I like the word better). I was making all these great faces then Linnell pulled one out too and started playing behind him. He got this great surprised look on his face like he was shocked that there was another stylophone and then we did a little stylophone dueting. Danny Weinkauf: When I introduced Paleontologist, I said that this was the first time the song was being played for adults and only the fifth time it was being played ever. I promised this would be one of the top five performances. John Flansburgh: Broom came out to play and proved that he can be very inappropriate for children. Linnell commented that i don't usually get to play for adults and Broom said i thought the audience looked taller. Linnell told me i was "working blue" and Broom said he felt like Bob Saget. Then he said f*** quite a bit. It was pretty f***ing funny. We continued to banter for quite a while before eventually getting to the song. It seemed like Linnell was trying to drag out the banter because he was having such a good time. I let some of the crowd play his guitar during the Polka. BlueCanary got probably the best picture he has ever taken. Actually, He has better pictures from this show that almost any other. The stars must have aligned. TMBG Port City Music Hall 6/12/09 (behind the scenes) John Flansburgh: We started Memo but I called it off part way in and said he didn't feel like playing it so they moved on. i actually still said "Celebration" in a left over from those spring kids shows. We pulled out the stylophones again for Hearing Aid and I got some great pictures. We had brought Curt with them so we got some great trumpet solos. He was in top form, probably because he got to leave to stage periodically and go stand somewhere cooler. John Linnell: Alphabet of Nations wasn't on the setlist but we added it in, BlueCanary believes because someone had been shouting for it in the audience. I think that may be the only time He has seen them take a request. Dan did an encore presentation of Where's Dan? for Fingertips, playing from the raised VIP area on the side of the club. He may have even been standing on a chair or a table. He’s not sure. But that was the last time I saw him do it. He wish i'd bring that back. TMBG Berkelee Performance Center 6/13/09 (behind the scenes) John Flansburgh: We kept talking about why we liked playing at Berklee. It had to do with it being a music school, memories of shows there when they were kids and the theater being so much nicer and having better acoustics than what they were used to. We also liked that the audience was so much more polite and actually clapped after solos. BlueCanary believes they also made mention of the fact that both the Dans went to school there. John Linnell: Curt was with us again (he was along for the ride the whole weekend) and got to do the Istanbul intro and outro. We played with their stylophones again on Hearing Aid. Dan Miller: BlueCanary saw someone he is pretty sure was my mom down in the orchestra area. No one stood and rushed the stage until the encores. he actually ran into a teenager at work the next day who had also been at the show and was very disappointed in the lack of energy and dancing in the crowd. They really were a very polite crowd. John Flansburgh: My attempts to divide the audience for the call backs on Drink were only marginally successful and the audience's rhythm was not very good considering how many of them were probably music students. TMBG New Haven Town Green 6/14/09 (behind the scenes) John Flansburgh: BlueCanary is sorry to say he remembers only two things that happened at this show. One was an ongoing joke about how Curt had come down from his ice cream mountain to perform at the show. I was basically making him out to be the king of Candyland or something and teasing him about how far he had had to travel (he's from Connecticut). Danny Weinkauf: The other was I dedicating I Am A Paleontologist to "that dude with the green mohawk." There was a person with a bright green mohawk in the crowd that BlueCanary had noticed earlier and apparently so had I. The funny part was, it was a girl. BlueCanary believe Dan point this fact out to me while they were playing the intro to the song and after some squinting i had this very funny "whoops" face. he actually had a brief back-and-forth with the mohawk girl on Flickr afterwards and she didn't mind at all and was very excited that he had noticed her. he also noticed that she joined the wiki recently. Hi, if you happen to be reading this! John Flansburgh: Galadrielpotter was going through my videos from shows trying to see if he had a video of Paleontologist at this show. he doesn't but he did find video of I Am Not Your Broom that is very funny and which he does not remember AT ALL. He has never posted any of his videos (save one) because He always figured there were better ones out there but after going back through them today, he decided to throw most of them up on YouTube, partly so he can link to several of them in this blog. TMBG Prospect Park 7/11/09 (behind the scenes) John Flansburgh: We started with Fibber Island. A little kid managed to get on stage and ran part way across, then stopped to look out at the crowd, very proud of himself before he was scooped up by an adult. The band seemed remarkably unfazed by this though it did seem to amuse Danny. We did some great silly flubbering sounds before leading into Zilch and got a lot of the crowd going with them. Dan Miller: There was so much confetti at this show. Iggy really got into the canons, probably because he didn't need to do much with the lights at an outdoor show, and he and the guitar tech just kept reloading and reloading them. There was even one accidental shoot off while one was being loaded. BlueCanary believes they went off four times in total. The best of which was during Bed Bed Bed when a large portion of the confetti landed on John Linnell's head and keyboard and he just kept playing without bothering to brush it off. John Linnell: BlueCanary havs some fantastic pictures of me making extremely silly faces from this show, including a great "Guatemala" shot. I also must be allowed a very short fangirl moment to point out that after the very unflattering cut it received in January, my hair had once again reached optimum length. John Flansburgh: I introduced not one but two euphoniums for Seven and Dan and Curt had a nice little euphonium party center stage. Danny Weinkauf: Flans promised they would keep playing if it started to rain, as the sky was looking a little threatening but it held off until they were driving home several hours later. Flans introduced Paleontologist, asking them to stand up and pretend that it was their favorite song even though they had never heard it before. No need to pretend! BlueCanary loved that song already :-) John Linnell: I didn't insert a song into Particle Man but still dragged out the bridge with some ad-libbing about how he was making the song longer just so we would clap more. Dan Miller: We sang Happy Birthday to a little girl named Flora who was sitting in the member section. She must have been a friend of someone in the band. It was very cute. Marty Beller: Flans told them that I as going back to his boy band roots with Alphabet Lost and Found and that unlike the rest of the band, i was only in it for the money. John Flansburgh: Broom performed a little bit of "All Star" trying to get Linnell to sing something else but he wouldn't bite. We also stopped the song to explain that servitude was what happened when a server has attitude. Danny Weinkauf: BlueCanary is convinced that we did Where Do They Make Balloons only because an article that the Johns had been interviewed for before the show for one of the Brooklyn papers listed it as sure-to-be-played (probably not realizing that they hadn't been playing it since they started doing Paleontologist). When Danny came back to the mic i said, "Remember me? I'm the guy that sang your favorite song." He also asked them to help him with the words but he did fine on his own. John Flansburgh: I introduced Doctor Worm with some shtick about worms under then bandshell being graduates. John Linnell: And we finished with an excellent horn performance on Istanbul. They attempted to get a setlist after the show but couldn't get close enough to the stage. Did get to see Marty signing some things for other fans but didn't have anything to get signed.